Nick Fuentes – America First
Nick Fuentes, born in 1998, is a controversial entrepreneur who built his platform on new-age conservative radicalism and has made waves in the political community that reach even the highest echelons of society.
Nicholas Joseph Fuentes was raised in Illinois, where he attended Lyons Township High School and began to develop his conservative views. He quickly became class president and commentated on politics through a local radio talk show hosted by his high school. Reportedly, he held “mainstream conservative” views but quickly became radicalized after leaving his hometown for college.
Fuentes attended Boston University, a site known for its development of media and political names such as Howard Stern, Bill Simmons, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Gary Locke, where in his freshman year, began to develop more radical views. He turned to common media platforms to raise awareness of his views, but received much backlash for attending a Unite the Right rally held in 2017 due to connections the rally had with subsequent political violence and fearmongering.
After finishing his first year at Boston University, Fuentes left the conservative college to pursue a career in freelance media, telling his parents, “‘Why don’t you give me just one year to explore this. If it works out, I’ll keep doing it. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll abandon it.’
And work out, it did. Fuentes began to amass a large following who began calling themselves “Groypers” (a possible amalgamation of “goy” and “griper”, an ironic poke at Jewish media presence), and received regular donations that fueled his career further. Through appealing to the tendencies and inclinations of people who felt marginalized and overlooked, he gathered a following that responded to an uncommonly effective fiscal strategy – livestreamed politics.
By mashing together a world which appeared dusty and archaic to an emerging voter generation with a sleek, optimized livestreaming platform, Fuentes allowed any viewer to share their views in a text-to-speech purchase option found on popular streaming sites like twitch.tv. This, along with his media presence on Instagram, YouTube, X, and many others, gave way for dozens of partnership programs to fund his efforts. However, the radical views he held which attracted viewer attention also attracted platform moderator intervention.
Around 2024, Fuentes’ platforms began disappearing due to violations of policy, according to YouTube moderators. His content was said to be “hate speech” and malevolent towards the average viewer. This prompted many other moderators to terminate Fuentes’ accounts and remove his content from viewers’ feeds. However, in a controversial move, after initially terminating Fuentes’ account, Elon Musk stated, “I cannot claim to be a defender of free speech, but then permanently ban someone who hasn’t violated the law, no matter how much I disagree with what they say.” This, along with a key endorsement from Alex Jones, a long-time right-wing commentator and a platform given to Fuentes by Tucker Carlson on Fox News gave life back to the movement.
Since these appearances, Fuentes has found himself a steady platform created from brand loyalty and merchandise sales along with his friendship and partnership with several large names in the conservative community. As a Gen Z entrepreneur who has fought against the standard in numerous ways, Nick Fuentes has made it in the world.